


The Dangling Conversation

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2018-02-11 10:06:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2063928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about Mindy and Danny's struggle after a tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Paul Simon Knows From Sadness

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story in July, 2014 before I knew what a beta reader was, and before I realized that point of view couldn't be so super fluid. I just made some edits and fixed some elements I found egregious, and I don't know if it's better for it. 
> 
> I'm re-posting with the edits.
> 
> This is post-Season 2 and pre-Season 3, so it's mostly AU.

“Maybe you should leave.”

From his lifetime, Danny possessed many scars. A purplish one tucked back into his hairline where Louis Martinello pounded his head into the sidewalk after discovering that Danny attended ballet class every day after school in the junior high.   He had a silvery jagged line that zig-zagged down his ankle after he fell into an open manhole cover trying to impress a girl (the fall wasn’t impressive, to be clear). There was a tiny moon shaped scar on his shoulder (this one he was kind of proud of) from when he fended off a knife wielding mugger down in Port Dogkill when he was 17, and on a date with Gina Lorrio, the original target and recipient of Operation Ass Grab.  He could not begin to count the number of scars on his heart. They were permanent, but maybe not as permanent as those four hard words and the look on Mindy’s face as she said them.

“Leave?” He wasn’t even sure he could get the whole syllable out, as he was having difficulty drawing breath.

People had always classified him as an angry person, but he didn’t believe that to be accurate. He was an indifferent person. You had to be connected to things and to care to be angry; Danny didn’t care or try to make connections. It wasn’t to say that he didn’t get angry; there were times that he could have murdered someone with his bare hands, given the chance. There was the time someone called Richie a gay slur; or any moment in the last 25 years when he thought about his father, and associated him with his mother’s tears or his brother growing up with only Danny as a father. But to be indifferent took less effort. It seemed effortless, anyway. Couched in his indifference (God, he loved Paul Simon. That guy knew from fucking sadness), Danny had been marking time by what he’d lost. And then, he fell in love with Mindy, and he ceased to be indifferent. He let his guard down and he flipped the switch from indifferent to utterly, desperately, achingly in love.

Danny had realized, somewhere along the way, that he also despised beginnings.

Most people, the sane or rational ones, loved the beginnings. The newness, the butterflies, trying on new relationships for size. Danny hated all of that. He hated small talk. He hated butterflies (maybe even the literal ones that hatched from caterpillars; they seemed basically flighty). He hated the unknown and as a result, he warmed up to people at about a rate of one person every three years.

To be completely fair, Danny was as equally unthrilled with endings.

Endings only lead to more beginnings.

He couldn’t comprehend the words that she was saying, as if she wasn’t speaking English anymore. Her mouth was moving but the words were foreign, tumbling and crossing over each other. It made his head hurt. He was nauseous; everything was starting to go dark.

Danny didn’t remember clearing the dining table of their uneaten meal; he didn’t remember breaking that candlestick against the fireplace. When his surroundings came back into focus, he was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, and his knees in his chin. His knuckles were bleeding and dust from the brick mantle tangled with his torn and ragged skin.

He sat still, for longer than he wanted to, because he didn’t know how he had gotten there. He tried to survey the scene, figure out where his wife was, if he'd harmed more than just some knick knacks and his own hands. (He knows that no matter how enraged he could have been, he never would have physically harmed her. Emotionally, he couldn’t say.)

After fifteen minutes of reassessment, nothing made any more sense than it had before. Nothing made any sense at all, actually.

His bones ached with tension and he gingerly pulled himself up, using the coffee table for support.

How had they gotten to this point? Friendship, dating, marriage. Logical progression. Renovations. People always told them that renovations led to divorce, but they waved that away. Danny and Mindy loved camping out in their own apartment, pretending to live like college students with only a toaster oven and coffee pot when their kitchen was remodeled. They both walked around with dry wall dust in their hair and joked that they were imagining what they’d look like in thirty years, white haired and wizened.

The renovations were a beginning he could tolerate. They made him learn patience, the importance of details.

He built her a walk in closet that rivaled the dressing room at Saks, and he willingly watched some horrendous movie about a bunch of women walking down the street for Mindy to show him the closet that the husband built for the wife  (don’t ask him their characters' names; he could barely handle the two hours of his life that he lost during that film). 

That was when they were happy. They were lucky. They were everything.

Dragging his hand along the wall, Danny plodded back to the bedroom and found Mindy curled on her side of their bed. Her reading glasses rested haphazardly on her face and the latest edition of Vogue magazine splayed across her chest. Danny leaned down to kiss her forehead, the same way that he had for the entirety of their marriage.

He could not count the amount of times that he had entered their quiet apartment after a long night at the hospital, kicked off his shoes and snuck into their shared bedroom to drop a kiss on her sleeping forehead. He found himself fantasizing about it sometimes, when he’d spent too much time hunched on the doctor’s lounge sofa, or when he’d been stuck in traffic or a meeting and all he wanted was to be home with his wife.

He told her once that he got homesick at least three times a day.

He was homesick now.

Danny's weight on the bed and their sudden physical contact caused Mindy to stir, and she took in his presence with wide, almost frightened eyes. The weight of the evening pressed heavier on his chest. Danny balanced himself on his forearms, keeping eye contact. “I’m so, so sorry, Min. I don’t even know…I don’t know what happened. Truly.”

"I don't even know how I fell asleep." Mindy said, not bothering to acknowledge his admission.  She took off her glasses, rubbing at her eyes. “I gotta get my make up off.”

Danny rolled off of her, and onto his back, staring at the antique tin ceiling that they had chosen together when they decorated their expanded master suite. After a few deep breaths and an increasing unease, he decided that it would be best to follow her, to not let this conversation fall into a crack of indifference.  Or maybe he followed because he knew that he didn’t want to be in a room without her, let alone leave their relationship, even if it was at her request.

Mindy’s face was covered in the white cream of her facial routine, and she blanched slightly when her husband’s reflection appeared behind her. Danny wrapped his arms around her waist, in the imitation of a posed prom photo. He whispered into her ear, “Min, I’m sorry,” and she shivered involuntarily. Danny took the cloth out of her hand, and gently began to wipe the cream from her face.“I don’t know how to do this.”

She raised an eyebrow. “To exfoliate? Or to be married to me?”

"Mindy."  It wasn't a warning; it was a plea.

“It was just that I saw the look in your eye when I told you that…the test was negative. You were so disappointed. Like I couldn't give you what-”

“Of course I was disappointed. So were you! I wasn't blaming you for-How is that a reason to tell me to…to…” His blood pressure rose again, and his head already throbbed with the drumbeat of excess adrenaline.

She looked away, down at the countertop, out of his eye line. “I shouldn’t have…I should never have said that. I was hurt, and I was being dramatic."

“My reaction was proportionately dramatic, I guess.”

Their eyes met in the mirror, and her lips pulled into a sardonic smile. “I thought that the life that I wanted would just happen to me.”

“Yeah, I took a cab to the rib cage to convince you that I loved you, so, yes, we were destined for a simple love affair.” He matched her smile in their reflection and inhaled the eucalyptus scent of her cleansing cream. “Are you okay? What’s really going on in there?”

She turned to him, finally, burying her face in his shoulder and neck. Danny held her as she cried, her sobs echoing against the ceramic tiles. “Please don’t hold it against me if I can’t have your babies.”

He didn’t answer her at first, because it was a ridiculous notion that he would even think of doing such a thing. “Never.”

Danny led Mindy back to their bed, fluffing her pillows and settling her into their blankets. They laid in silence for a few minutes, while Danny absently fiddled with the frayed sleeve of the old T-shirt of his that Mindy was wearing, and listened to a car alarm sound off in the distance. “Danny, your hand!” She held up his raw knuckles, “I’ll get the bandages.” His wife grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom and tended to his injury, wrapping his hand with gauze and too much tape until it looked like he was a boxer who'd just lost a fight.

With a tentative peace newly established, they curled into each other and fell into an uneasy sleep.


	2. They Don't Write FanFics About the Ones That Come Easy

Mindy and Danny had been trying to have a baby for almost the entirety of their marriage.

Mindy repeatedly told Danny that she didn’t want him to be an “old dad” and since he was 40 when they married, she didn’t want him in a wheelchair at their childrens' high school graduations. When she did not immediately swell with child, she worried that a lifetime of processed sugars combined with a tilted cervix would be what prevented Danny from performing his husbandly duty of impregnating her in the traditional way. After seven months, their efforts succeeded, and Mindy had never been so thrilled to have swollen, tender breasts in her entire life. When he found out, Danny lifted Mindy into the air, whirling her around and pumping his fists, like he’d just won an Olympic gold medal and an Academy Award all at once.

It had been fall when she took the test, and in a fit of Pinterest inspiration, she'd decorated two larger pumpkins with their names in typical Mindy fashion with glitter and jewels, and then next to them, a tiny pumpkin simply labeled _Baby_ in a swirling script.  She'd placed them carefully, arranging them and re-arranging them for maximum viewing and exposure, until finally, Danny came home and found her voicing a serious conversation about personal responsibility between the parental pumpkins and the baby gourd.

Danny had left that “Baby” pumpkin on their table far past Halloween.

For twelve weeks, Mindy had managed to power through the bloating and the fatigue, and the nausea that quickly vaulted into vomiting when a new smell or taste was introduced too quickly, or too often.  Even when the spotting began, no one even immediately panicked, because neither Danny nor Mindy would allow a patient to panic about something as common as spotting. It came and went within a week and Mindy’s nausea and hatred of prenatal vitamins resumed anew at the fourteen week mark. She was annoyed that after her first trimester ended her morning sickness did not, but she figured it was a small price to pay.

It was when the bleeding started in earnest at sixteen weeks that Mindy actually had begun to panic.

Sometimes at night, when she had trouble sleeping, she'd picture all of her friends and family that had gathered in her recovery room after the surgery she'd undergone to stop the hemorrhaging.  Rishi and Richie, their heads bowed, standing off to one side; Morgan and Peter solemnly admiring the window casings, not knowing where to put their eyes or their arms.  Jeremy had stood near the door, Britishly stammering and repressing something, probably; to his left was Tamra on her phone and Beverly hiding behind a potted plant.

If she'd close her eyes and concentrate, she could see Danny, perched on her bedside, his usually expressive mouth drawn into a tight line. He’d patted her, and told her that she was the bravest person he’d ever known. Well, it was what he had tried to say, but the sentence had broken in the middle, and that was the moment that Danny’s newly unleashed tears had sent everyone scurrying. Mindy remembered joking, “It’s not the apocalypse! He just has feelings!” (Twilight drugs were the fucking best, and Mindy had felt like she was floating and tightly tethered to the ground, all at the same time.)

It felt exactly like the end of the world.

Mindy tried to live up to the idea that she could be the bravest person that Danny knew, but it only ever came out strangled.

Since their loss had occurred so close to the holidays, Mindy spent two weeks of recovery, plus Christmas and New Years, at her parent’s house in Boston, sleeping in her childhood bedroom. If Mindy was out of the office, Shulman Women’s Health Associates couldn’t function without Danny, so he stayed behind, keeping up with their patients and working himself to exhaustion. He would fly to Boston on the shuttle every few days, and the weekends, never once complaining about the airport security required for a 50 minute flight, or the traffic, or Massachusetts drivers (all completely within his rights).  He painted her toe nails, read to her from _Bridget Jones’ Diary_ , and brought her fluffy macaroons from her favorite bakery on a semi-daily basis. Mindy once woke to find Danny stretched half way under the frame of her canopy bed, snoring softly and using his jacket as a pillow.

Her heart ached as she realized that he seemed like he was still waiting to board the plane he'd ridden to get to her, another stranded traveler on the concourse.

They had spent Christmas Day tucked onto the sofa, watching a somewhat equal mixture of romantic comedies and action movies ( _Die Hard_ was Christmas themed, after all, Danny advocated). On New Year’s Eve, they were asleep at 8:30, tangled in a mess of blankets and magazines and half open boxes of TastyKakes.

Mindy’s grief had legs, and it had run rampant through those weeks.

Mindy referred rarely to her traitorous placenta, the one whose rupture had caused the loss of the baby. She did complain once to Danny that she preferred not to say that the baby was lost because then it felt like she had misplaced him, and that implied irresponsibility. She didn’t want to think of a better term, because that meant having to examine the situation further, and she didn't have the energy for that.

If there was good to be found in any of it, the miscarriage had served to push Danny and Mindy closer together in some ways.  They shared a more common goal, gave them appreciation of the other that they didn’t previously have.

It had made Danny realize the strength in his wife; and Mindy the true sweetness of her husband.

******

Danny awoke the morning after their strange, un-fighting fight to find the shower damp with moisture from Mindy’s morning routine, and himself alone.

He rode the train in to work alone, having time to think about the day that he’d exclaimed to a car full of strangers that he would never marry this woman back before they even had really become friends. He thought that it might be his civic duty to go back, “I would always marry this woman!” Over and over, every day, he would marry that woman. Looking at the faces that stared moonily into the artificial light of their respective electronic devices, Danny figured that he would just save it. Maybe for a day when his wife was present or when he didn't feel like there was anvil pressing into his chest.

Danny found an old, crumpled pack of cigarettes in the farthest reaches of one of his office desk drawers. He sighed in relief as he tucked one of the decrepit cigarettes into the pocket of his white lab coat, waiting for a break between patients to sneak out and smoke it in earnest. He didn’t smoke anymore; not that Mindy knew of, mostly because if she did, she’d try to break his face. Even back when they were dating, she had had a sixth sense for when he was about to, and she could conjure herself out of thin air to grab one from his hand and throw it on the ground. She’d exclaim “Hmm…sexy cancer!” and give him her patented half glare, half smile as she dared him to object.

And he did object at first, for a good, respectable, you're not the boss of me while, until he didn't anymore.  The next thing he knew, he'd quit smoking cold turkey.

Danny had long since been declared the fastest Pap smear in the practice, and he had done three in rapid succession so that he could finally steal two minutes to himself. He threw open the metal door to the back garden (well, garden might have been too fine a point; it was a place where things went to pile outside, near stuff that resembled vegetation) and trudged down the fire escape to find his wife sitting on the bottom step, white ear bud wires hooked over her shoulders. She didn't, or maybe couldn't, hear him as he approached, and he made a mental note to mention to her that she shouldn’t wear both ear buds when she was walking alone, she’d be too vulnerable.

“How do you always know when I want to smoke?” He asked, and Mindy promptly jolted into the air.

“Jesus, Danny! You scared me!” She was wearing a form fitting black and green color blocked dress that he always liked and commented on, so that had to be some kind of sign.  He ran an admiring hand loosely down her back, stopping briefly over her hips and then pulling back when she didn't immediately melt into his touch.

Defeated, Danny held out the unlit cigarette. “Do with it what you will.”

Mindy sighed. “Just smoke it, Danny.”

He raised his eyebrows. Being in a relationship with Mindy for almost three years had him trained to recognize traps when he saw them. He wasn’t going to get his legs blown off on a landmine. “Yeah, right.”

“No, seriously. We had a hard night. You deserve to be able to do whatever you want for a minute.”

He fumbled in his pocket for his lighter and placed the cigarette between his lips in the meantime.  Even through the paper, he could feel the familiar comfort of the tobacco and tar, and it set his pulse a little slower. “Give me ninety seconds.” Finally able to light the cigarette, Danny inhaled deeply, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs and savored the first few moments of nicotine as it buzzed through his bloodstream. “What’re you doing down here? I haven’t seen you all day.” He exhaled away from her, then kissed the top of her head, grateful for the newfound fuzzy feeling in his head.

“I had some early appointments and then I met Gwen for lunch. We went to the Marc Jacobs sample sale.”

“Did you find something for Richie’s party?”

“I have some options.” She looked up at him, mischievously. “Maybe you can show off your banging wife to all your Too Good for the Island friends.”

Danny kissed her again, this time on the lips, and she made a face. “Gah, you taste like an ashtray.”

Richie and Ramon’s Welcome Home party was the coming weekend. Richie was finally moving back to the city, after years in Florida, ostensibly because he had found a job in the Hamptons. Danny could tell from Richie's cryptic tone that there was more to it than that, but he didn’t press, mainly because he was just excited to have his little brother back in his life on a full time basis.

He couldn’t wait to have his wife back in his life on a full time basis. She always seemed so far away anymore.

Danny grasped at Mindy’s waist, digging his fingers into the top of her rear end. “I missed you on the train this morning.”

“We ride the train together every day, Danny. No one’s going to molest you if I’m not there.” She waved away the smoke as it wafted toward her, despite his efforts to the contrary. “Ugh, Danny, I regret giving you permission for this.”

He took one last, deep drag and threw the butt to the ground, stubbing it out under his toe. “It was nice while it lasted.” Danny gave Mindy another playful tap and headed up the steps. He turned around when he remembered his earlier thought. “Don’t wear those stupid ear buds when you’re walking by yourself, okay?”

Mindy nodded, but he could tell she was already knee deep in whatever Beyoncé was singing to her, so it wasn't going to matter how sternly he addressed her.  He cared, therefore he worried.  Despite the magnetic pull of everything that was his wife, Danny climbed the back stairs into the office, returning to measure bellies and discuss birth control methods with people who were attempting to prevent the only thing that Danny and Mindy could seem to think about these days.

He didn’t know how Mindy did it; surrounded by women engorged with pregnancy, exhilarated with their beginnings and new babies’ arrivals.  Considering that his only role in the conception was the donation of chromosomes, he still spent almost every moment of every day contemplating what he had lost.  And not lost as in misplaced, but lost as in vanished. 

He had gone to bed one night in early December as an expectant father, and woken up the next day as someone who wasn't, and he couldn't seem to figure out how to reconcile the moments between.


	3. Making Up Memories of You

Danny kept a picture of Mindy on their wedding day on his desk, next to his phone. In it, Mindy reclined decadently in a porcelain claw foot bath tub, her silky white dress gathered around her to mimic a bubble bath. The joy that he read in her eyes was palpable and unmistakable. Danny stared at that picture of Mindy more and more often lately, wondering what he could possibly do to return her to that level of joy, short of learning how to turn back time.

Falling in love with Mindy had been easy to do, even back when he was so terrified of fucking it up. Something about the wide-eyed, idealized way she looked at the world made him feel equal parts nervous and just, well, alive.

He had no idea what she was talking about half the time, but he still wanted to hear more. On paper, they seemed like a terrible fit, puzzle pieces to completely different scenes.

But in reality, she was magical. Mindy made him the man that he knew existed within himself, but couldn’t always find buried under the rubble of the wreckage that had become his life. Even before they were together, he’d wanted to take care of her, because she made it appear that she was the damsel in distress, but he soon realized that it was Mindy who had ultimately rescued him.

He chided himself for being “that guy”; the guy sitting in his office after everyone had gone home, being melancholy and feeling sorry for himself. There were other pictures he’d taken to staring at, too; but those he couldn’t keep out on his desk.

The night that Mindy had been rushed to the hospital, hemorrhaging and scared, the ultrasound technician had captured a few photos of the sonogram and handed them to Danny. In all the hubbub, he’d tucked them into his pocket, not thinking of them again until after Mindy had come back home, exhausted and wrung out and so so sad. Mindy still didn’t know that he had them, and he wasn’t sure if she would even want to know. There were still times that he felt like he was doing something illicit; skulking in shadows with photographs of his child.

Danny had relived that night in his head a thousand times; the predatory memories stalking his waking and his sleeping hours. His heart still seized thinking about how much blood Mindy had lost, and even still, watching their child on that tiny screen, flipping and turning in his mother’s uterus, unaware that his placenta was slipping. Prior to that night, they’d heard the heart beat; they’d seen images of something that looked vaguely like a giant prawn. But the night of the miscarriage, flushed with anxiety and pre-emptive grief, he had truly seen his son for the first time. The baby’s profile, his features perfectly shaped and identifiable, burned forever on his memory, and now, only held on the slippery photo paper he laid in front of his keyboard, flat against the desk.

With a light fingertip, Danny traced the curve of the baby’s head, and his chin where it rested on his round chest, down to the shadow of his then-beating heart.

At sixteen weeks, his son had weighed one ounce. Danny hadn’t known it was possible to love one ounce of a person with that kind of intensity.

Danny hated that he was getting good at losing. He knew what it was like to have a father and an intact family; then not. To have a wife; then not. To have a baby; then not. To be a dad; then not. Hell, there were even a few moments when he thought he would lose Mindy, both literally and figuratively. If his life was an airport, it only had a gate for departures.

Morgan knocked on the door, "Dr. C, you coming?"

He slid the carefully re-folded photos of his son back into the darkness of his second left hand desk drawer and turned off the light.

 

 

********

Mindy loved being in the hospital during the wee hours of the night. She never complained about late night calls, or the bad vending machine food that she was forced to dine on when she had a late delivery. She savored the quiet of the halls and the stillness of the doctor’s lounge. Even the strange fluorescent lighting and hum of hospital machinery was comforting to her.  Mindy knew that she was a good doctor; her patients always complimented her on her bedside manner, and her calm and collected approach to deliveries.  She didn't judge people for choosing natural child birth (as long as no doula showed up acting all superior) or lecture women about their birthing plans.  She loved her job and she was good at it.  And the hospital was where she could really prove it. 

Once it got really late, Mindy liked to pretend that she was trapped in a post apocalyptic universe and that St. Brendan’s was the last available safe zone. She’d lurk in corners and hunt imaginary prey and demonstrate superiorly mimed crossbow skills. Danny called it her “JLog impersonation.” (He thought, erroneously, that Jennifer Lawrence’s nickname was JLog. Mindy had been watching the _Hunger Games_ on Netflix and pointed out the sinew of JLaw’s arms. Danny, seeing a girl hanging from a tree, heard it as JLog and the rest was history. Danny’s response to Mindy's correction had been: “No harm, no foul.”)

Somehow Danny had allowed himself to be invited to an after work beer with Morgan and Peter tonight, an activity that the year before would have been rejected out of hand and with a vehemence that may have been considered insulting. Post-marriage, Danny seemed much more susceptible to socialization, which Mindy viewed as a welcome change in his personality.

Truly, Mindy admired how much Danny had come into his own since she had chased him (while he chased her chasing him) up the Empire State Building.

He hadn’t needed to change two or twenty things, like he’d originally feared; he had just grown. He’d become more Danny.

Every day, she loved him a little bit more. She still got excited when she saw him get out of the shower, and she was fascinated by watching him shave.  Weirdly, she loved the different colors of his beard; there was the obvious dark brown, but also some reddish and her favorite, the grayish white patches.  Those she would trace over as he dozed.

He had actually begun to let a few more people in, one at a time, like he was the VIP area at an exclusive club. Gradually, he’d allowed his father to call every other week; then, Little Danni had come to visit, and eventually, he flew out to visit his father for two weeks in the summer.

With medium amounts of cajoling, Danny had even grown to accept that he was going to have watch romantic comedies on Saturday nights, and he could sometimes even vaguely remember their plots (“You know, the one where he goes crazy nuts and then they go dancing?” re: _Silver Linings Playbook_ ).

He continued to refuse to use emojis when he texted her. She respected him for that. He was still grouchy before his coffee (and after, and most other times of day), surly in crowds, and patently refused to suffer fools gladly. He was exactly himself.

Though her C-section had ended successfully hours before, Mindy was still sitting on the well worn sofa in the doctor’s lounge, watching _Real Housewives_ and eating Twizzlers that she’d gotten from the vending machine. She had two texts on her phone from Danny, both imploring her to leave her ear buds in her purse and the second asking her to please come home soon, he was a little buzzed and he missed her.

In a flurry of beard and plaid flannel shirt, still smelling like the inside of a distillery, Peter appeared at her side. “What up, Lahiri Castellano Citronella Jones?”

“Just finishing up.”

“We aren’t both on call, right? ‘Cuz I could totally be scamming on a choice piece otherwise.”

Mindy rolled her eyes. “You’re on call, Peter. I’m just…”

Peter leaned forward, and slowly examined the package of Twizzlers that laid empty on the coffee table. His voice took on a lighter, softer tone. “Danny went home hours ago. He didn’t really seem too into the whole beers thing. He said he wasn’t feeling great.”

Mindy looked over at Peter, who she knew meant well, and also knew that Danny would never ever confide in, if he had any options at all. “I am a lot of work.”

“He’s no pocketful of rainbows himself.” Peter expelled a short breath, as if he was girding himself.  “You guys okay? I don’t think I’ve seen you two in the same room in weeks.”

“We’re good, Peter. I mean, it’s hard right now, but we’re good. He’s good. I’m good.”

“So what I hear you saying is: everything is good.” Peter’s eyes conveyed a care and concern that made Mindy itch with the realization that her _everything is fine_ mantra was falling flat to those who knew better.

Mindy nodded. “I’m gonna go, then. Y'know, if Danny’s home.”

Peter reached over to give her knee a squeeze. “I think I saw someone from District 3 in the cafeteria. Stay low.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still trying to figure this out...


	4. Confessions of A Dangerous Mind

Mindy returned home to find her husband dozing on their leather sofa, a documentary about soap droning on the television. Danny lived by the code that nothing good happened after eleven o’clock, so he was usually asleep well before then. He startled awake as the door accidentally slammed shut behind her.

“Shit!”

“Sorry!” Mindy collapsed on top of him, pinning him back down to the couch with her hip.  She held out her phone to show him the screen containing his texts. “I miss you too, Danny.”

He pushed her hair out of both their faces, his wedding ring brushing against her ear. “So your phone does work.” Danny pressed his lips to hers, deciding against a guilt trip. “I’m glad you’re home.”

Mindy took in her husband’s sleepy face, with his pillowy lips and the stubble shading his jaw. His breath was still slightly hoppy, and she tasted the after effects of several smoked cigarettes still on his full lips. His skin was warm where she rested her hand on his stomach. “How did I get so fucking lucky?”

Wordlessly, Danny tugged her off the couch and into their bedroom, both undressing as they walked. They tumbled into bed, exploring each others' bodies with their hands and mouths. Mindy didn’t care about foreplay, she just wanted Danny.

It felt good to want something this much that she could actually have.

* * *

 

She’d spent 34 years learning to love her curves, and her cellulite and her stretch marks, and those weird nipple hairs, and it was right around the same time that Danny started loving them too. She loved how he always touched her like she was wondrous to him, like he was discovering new territory every time they touched. He told her once in a card (Valentine’s Day? They started to run together in her head because for as much that Danny kept inside, he could almost always articulate things so succinctly on paper) that her body was his home; that he could live inside her. Now his house was haunted, she lamented.

Having Danny’s deft hands on her body, treating her like she was no longer breakable, but that she was strong and she was vibrant; it made her feel lighter than she had in weeks.

They lay side by side in bed, sheet slipping under her breasts, “Oof. I needed that.”

Danny rolled over so that he was covering her chest with his own. “Anytime, any place.” He waggled his eyebrows and pecked at her neck as he dropped back onto his side.

“You’re such a dork.” She gave him a playful shove. “It’s nice to have sex just to have sex.”

“Sex with a purpose is definitely more daunting. I feel like there’s a guy with a stopwatch and a measuring tape next to the bed sometimes.” She squeezed his bicep, welcoming his honesty. Danny nudged her with his nose. “It’s okay though. I want it just as much as you do. Just so you know.”

She knew. “I do. I’m sorry I’ve been such a mess. I didn’t think…I guess I didn’t realize how important it all was to me until I couldn’t have it.”

“Life is messy, kid. We’re messy. And look how great this works out.” He gestured to their naked forms. “It’s gonna happen eventually. It just takes time.”

“My eggs are already old enough to drink, Danny. We don’t have time.” Mindy grabbed for her glass of water on the bedside table. “Ohmygod, I have alcoholic eggs.”

“You do not have alcoholic eggs. Your eggs…drink responsibly.” He sometimes didn’t even know how he participated in these conversations. _And now, in from Left Field, Mindy Lahiri!_ It boggled the mind. “It’s gonna happen, Min.”

“I liked you better when you were all skeptical and off putting. When did you become the optimistic one?”

“I can complain bitterly about something if you’d like. If it would make you feel better.”

“It would. I don’t like it when you’re the calm one. It upsets the balance of the universe.”

Danny considered for a moment, and changed the subject. “I think Richie’s up to something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. But he loved Florida and now all of a sudden he’s Mr. Hamptons Tennis Pro guy? It’s weird.”

“Weirder than you being the Glass is Half Full guy? He misses you. And he misses your Ma, God knows why. It’s hard to be away from family. And you Castellanos love to be on top of each other. You’re like those Japanese sleeping pod people.”

“I don’t even know what words you’re saying right now. But the kid is hiding something.”

“What? He’s on the lam? He’s been ejected from Florida for being glam as hell?”

Danny shrugged, “It’s something.”

Mindy patted him, rolling over to kiss his bare chest. “The party is in four days and you can interrogate him then. I’ll ask the yacht club if they’ll install one of those scary police lights for you to shine in his eyes.”

“Fine.” Danny disappeared under the sheet, kissing down the length of her body, hovering near her upper thighs. “Can I just say one thing though?” His eyelashes tickled her leg.

“Shoot.”

“I don’t want you to be sad anymore.” His eyes were full of what Mindy knew was honest care and concern. Mindy admired how his face was a map of his emotions. He was a puppy, eager and anxious and sweet.  She felt privileged that she was one of the only people on earth who knew him like this, that he let her all the way in. 

“I’m not _as_ sad, anymore. I’m just worried.” She wanted to tell him that she would always be sad about losing (gah, not losing, not misplacing, just no longer having) their baby. She didn’t want to think about how her due date would have been in a few weeks, or how she felt her resentment for pregnant women growing with each passing day that she couldn’t conceive again. She wanted to tell him that she knew that he felt invisible, because his job was to protect her and care for her, and no one was protecting or caring for him. 

She felt guilty.  His knuckles were still raw from their altercation with the fireplace, and she felt a pang each time she noticed them.  That was her responsibility; she had ownership of her words and she knew when she chose them that they were exactly the ones that would break him. 

She hated that she had tried to break him when he'd been so patient and kind and understanding.  "Just super worried."

“I don’t want you to be worried, either,” he said, as his words vibrated on her skin. “We’ll be okay, Min. Don’t put this pressure on yourself. We tell our patients this stuff every day. A watched pot never boils. A watched ovum never implants.” He gave her the half smile, the one that could always launch her heart into convulsions and palpitations, to punctuate his bad joke.  God, she loved him.

Mindy groaned loudly. “Okay, never say that again.” She tugged on his hair. “Just have your way with me, you idiot.”

Danny did as he was told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really value everyone's feedback and comments. I am so grateful for everyone's kind words.  
> I am having some trouble figuring out where I want to go from here, so I'm open for suggestions! (I think I have the end settled but I have to get there first lol)


	5. Empty As The Inside of Me

It was the second time in as many days that Danny woke alone.

He was beginning to discover that the most predictable thing about bereavement was that it was completely and unflaggingly unpredictable in its scope and manifestations. He had found that as long as he kept himself busy, he could hold it off.

But in the quiet moments - the times that he was alone, the times that the noise died down, and the room was empty - the grief crept back in and always, always blanketed him.

Maybe it was the bare intensity of his emotions that confounded him the most, and pushed him furthest from the sense of peace that he craved. For every moment that he had thought, _this is finally the turning point_ , _we're gonna get over this hump_ there came another wave immediately after that caused him to wonder if they were just going to drown there, in their despair.

Sometimes Danny even wondered if the people on the train could see the tendrils of grief that wrapped around his heart; if strangers and passersby could sense how brittle and strange and out of control he felt inside.

He knew that Mindy could; that she didn’t believe him when he told her they’d get through it. She knew he didn’t believe it quite yet himself, and he thought that if he said it out loud, it would make it more true. She knew him so well.

And he knew well enough that if he didn’t wake up next to his wife in the morning, it was going to be another one of those days.

Showering and shaving and dressing felt like being underwater and he didn't quite know how he managed to drag himself through morning rush hour subway traffic into the office.   Danny went through the motions of his morning appointments, and he hoped that he had smiled at all the right times, and looked stern enough when he lectured the teenagers who were worried that taking birth control every day would make them.  He was positive that he was incapable of sympathetic or empathetic interactions, and luckily, nothing he encountered appeared to warrant any.  Not before his cigarette break, anyway.  

He had broken down and bought a few packs on his way in that morning and after his fifth or six patient, he'd wandered out back for a smoke, disappointed not find his wife there.  He'd felt out of sync enough that he threw the cigarette into the waiting trash bin before it was even lit.

Peter found him pacing in the break room. "You need something, Dan?"

"Nah, I'm fine." 

Peter gently took his arm and steered him toward one of the hard plastic chairs.  "You're like a caged tiger.  You want to talk about it?"

Danny took in Peter's frat boy exterior, and shrugged as Beverly began hovering nearby, sorting the coffee creamers.  "I'm good."   He couldn't fathom how relieved he'd felt when his pager went off announcing the impending arrival of Mrs. Schmidt's third child.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you know how many vaginas I saw today, Danny? All the vaginas. I saw all the vaginas. I will never be a lesbian. Vaginas are my nemesis.” Mindy collapsed into the chair in the doctor’s lounge, where Danny was stretched out on the couch, reading and attempting not to fall asleep in the middle of her sentence, as he had stuck around to wait for her after her delivery. She smelled like hospital soap and sweat and her blue scrubs were wrinkled.

“You just said vagina A LOT for someone who loathes them.”

“Shut up, you love vaginas.  Vagina lover.”

“That is a really weird word when you say it once, let alone repeatedly. I don’t think we should say it anymore.” Danny closed his book and detached his tiny red reading glasses. “Listen, can we please postpone this performance of  the Vagina Monologues until morning and get out of here? I’m exhausted.”

"Suit yourself." She leaned near the vending machine, perusing the shelves for a salty snack to tide her over for the ride home, “Did you see Richie today? I thought you guys were having lunch to finish up the party planning?”

Danny was momentarily relieved that she was concentrating on her junk food choices, so she couldn’t see his face when he lied to her.

Danny Castellano was a lot of things, but a liar was not one of them.  Unless it meant protecting someone that he loved, and in this case, he thought that he might be doing Mindy a kindness to withhold some vital information from her. “No, he had some other stuff come up. We had to postpone.”

He had absolutely eaten lunch with his little brother. Danny had also stormed out of that same lunch, after a thrilled Richie announced that he and Ramon were chosen as prospective adoptive parents, and the baby was due in the coming weeks.

In the deli, Danny had felt all the blood drain from his face. “What.”

Richie looked down sheepishly at his roast beef sandwich. When he was a kid, he would call it “roast beast.” Danny had felt nostalgic for that time, when Richie followed him everywhere, and wanted to eat what he ate, wear what he wore, and just generally be a mini-Danny.  It had been nice feeling like he was worth being imitated.  That he had something that someone else might want.  Now he felt like he was the one having to pretend.  “You know that ever since Ramon and I got married, we’ve been looking to start a family.”

“This is just…the timing…” Danny pushed his sandwich into the middle of the table, no longer hungry. “Mindy is already so up and down—what am I supposed to tell her, Rich?”

“You could tell her you’re happy for us?” Richie was starting to redden around the ears, which had always been his tell, the window into his mood. “Dan, us getting a baby is good news.”

Six months ago, Danny’s reaction would have been pure joy and elation. Today, he was jealous and angry and resentful, followed by that niggling sense of shame that he was being ridiculously selfish. He didn’t begrudge Richie and Ramon any of their happiness, and he had no doubt in their ability to be amazing, loving parents. But the timing was terrible.  Richie would see that eventually. 

Granted, he'd see it after he got over the fact that his older brother had stomped out of the crowded deli immediately following the statement, not even bothering to throw down the cash he owed for his sandwich. Danny knew Richie would understand and forgive him eventually, he knew that Danny's temper ran hot and he wasn't particularly skilled at modulating it.  Richie was used to him flying off the handle and apologizing later (his family always called Danny's tendency to react then think: Ready, Fire, Aim) but he still wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Mindy.

So he didn’t. Instead, he took her home and rubbed her feet while she watched _Some Kind of Wonderful_ on cable. She ended up falling asleep on the sofa and Danny carried his bride to their bed, tenderly tucking her in.

Danny lay awake next to a slumbering Mindy, watching the minutes slide by on their bedside clock. He didn’t often suffer from insomnia, but his mind couldn't seem to wind down. He found himself replaying what seemed to be a reel of their greatest hits, all the tiny moments (reading her vending options during late nights or commiserating when she was sad about a date gone wrong), and the larger ones (airplane kissing, Empire State Building chases), everything that added up to standing in front of their family and friends exchanging vows. He kept hearing that damn Aaliyah song playing on a loop in his psyche, like a subliminal message. (Of course, he had literally heard it 94 times while he practiced that dance from the video, so it was likely it was burned somehow in his cerebrum.)

Danny couldn’t help but wonder why their past seemed to live in Technicolor but their present seemed in black and white. Mindy seemed so far away to him lately; he could count the words in their last several conversations. That wasn’t their norm, and as much as he acted as if he wished she wouldn’t burble on like a brook when she talked, he really loved listening to her. He could get caught up in her banter and her enthusiasm for God only knew what - sour straws, a new handbag, what was happening on one of her inane reality television shows - and even if he complained, he still craved it. He'd lived for 39 years in quiet, and when he finally allowed Mindy in, she blew the doors off the joint. For a short time, it had been disconcerting. Everything seemed too bright, too noisy, too much.

The weird thing was, it didn’t take long for him to stop missing those doors at all.

Danny watched his sleeping wife, and attempted to judge how angry she’d be if he woke her. He didn't know when he became the kind of guy who lied to his wife. Protection aside, it felt dirty and wrong and he wanted to be able to tell her something, anything that would make them both sleep more comfortably.

His alarm sounded at 5:30, but Danny was already in the shower. Mindy staggered into their bathroom, a deep pouty scowl on her face. “Too early, Castellano. Need sugary breakfast food.”

“I'm sorry about the alarm.  I forgot to turn it off." 

"Grmmm..." She growled unintelligibly.

"You have late appointments today, you should go back to bed.” He turned off the shower, watching her through the steam. He felt like he was always looking at her through steam lately, foggy and out of focus. “I’m gonna go to the gym.”

Mindy stood forlornly in the middle of the bathroom, her fuzzy bathrobe hanging open. She seemed unsure how she’d gotten in the room. “Okay.” She made a 180 degree turn and collapsed back into their bed, her robe half over her head by force of impact.

Danny kissed her goodbye, his own exhaustion from a combined ninety minutes of sleep making him plodding and overly deliberate. He wanted to crawl back into bed with her, but he also badly needed to punch out some of his frustration on an unsuspecting heavy bag.


	6. Tonight We'll Be Free

Danny sat on the tufted bench at the end of their bed, putting on his shoes.  Even after he'd finished, he'd remained there still as stone, elbows resting on his knees, hands still clasped between them.

Looking down at his shoes, it occurred to him that it had been weeks since he'd prayed.  Since the miscarriage, he'd been to church every Sunday, but he couldn't recall the last time he'd actually attempted a conversation with God, not since the night that he'd woken up next to a pool of his wife's own blood.  At the hospital, when the attending came out to tell him about the placental tear, and the blood loss, he didn’t even allow the man to finish; Danny had just walked directly to the chapel and prayed. He had knelt behind the door, because he was afraid his family and friends would see him, and they would know how desperate he was feeling, how lost.

He still couldn’t walk by that damn chapel, even on rounds; he’d take the oddest routes, twists, and turns to avoid it. The interns, he was sure, were beginning to wonder.

His faith had always been a comfort to him - through his Dad leaving and through Christina and everything in between - but now it all felt empty.

But tonight he knew he'd need help, that Mindy needed it, that they had to get through this night and this party and they couldn't do it all on their own. 

So he prayed. 

First (after a lengthy apology to the Lord for temporarily forsaking him - what? Danny was no heathen.) Danny prayed that no one at the party was oblivious enough to ask how the baby was, or if they were still trying to get pregnant, or say something insensitive like, “At least you know you can get pregnant.” (There was one in every crowd.) He apologized as he promised God that he would throat punch the first person who said, “There's a reason for everything," or "I'm sure the baby is in a better place.”

Then, of course, he had still had the matter of explaining Richie’s news to his wife before she found out about in a giant room full of well-wishers, so he asked for the strength and wisdom to do that, as well.

The courage, he figured, would come after a few trips to the bar.

Over the past few days, Danny had barely seen or spoken to Mindy, and he wasn’t really sure whose fault that was. All of his nerves felt raw and exposed, and he'd been snapping at everyone around him like he was a walking Venus Flytrap.  He could feel himself falling back into old patterns, and it felt like failure.  He felt like a failure.

Danny felt a cool hand rest on the nape of his neck, and he reached back to hold it. The skin to skin contact was unexpected, but welcome.

“You need a haircut.” Mindy played absently with one of the curls that threatened to touch his collar.

He kept forgetting to go to the barber. He should have made the effort before Richie’s party, but there were so many other efforts to make, he couldn't get to that one in a timely enough fashion. 

Danny looked up at her, taking in her glowing skin and her shiny party hair. She was gorgeous in a navy blue Grecian style dress. He wanted to unwrap her like a Christmas present.

Danny mumbled something about trying new things as he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into his lap. “You look beautiful, sweetheart.”

Mindy pulled away, just slightly, but enough to make it impossible for him to kiss her anywhere but her shoulder. “How much time, roughly, am I going to be trapped with your mother on a boat?”

“I won’t let her corner you.”

Annette Castellano had to be the most frightening five feet of woman that Mindy had ever encountered. (Morgan often referred to Annette as ten pounds of mean in a five pound bag.) When Annette got wound up (and it was not difficult to do: she had thrown a vase at Danny’s head once for suggesting that she change detergents after she'd mentioned hers had given her a rash) she was the equivalent of one of those wind up monkeys—clanging and clanging her cymbals until you either wanted to remove your own ear drums with a melon baller or murder her where she stood. No woman would ever be good enough for her Danny and Mindy was too Indian, too Hindu, too career focused, and too bubbly for her liking.

It didn't help that whenever Danny and his mother were in the same room, Danny reverted back to being a teenager. He could feel himself becoming more petulant but still adoring, and absolutely his mother’s child. Even before they were married, Mindy couldn’t seem to find a way to fit comfortably into their dynamic. She was a mime trying to break _into_ an invisible box, her face pressed up against the imaginary glass.

“I guess we’ll find out what Richie’s up to, tonight, huh?”

Danny inhaled sharply. “About that…” Well, he’d laid himself the best of plans. “Listen, Min, there’s something you need to know.” He rushed through an explanation of his lunch with Richie, how he may or may not have thrown a pickle across the booth in a fit of rage, how Richie had called him a self-centered prick, and the other customers looking utterly confused by the entire exchange. He promised her that he’d apologized to Richie since then, and relayed their uncomfortable phone conversation, in which Danny had repeatedly told Richie that he was sorry, and he had reacted beyond poorly, and to please, please forgive him.

Mindy sat in silence, synthesizing all the information she'd just been downloaded. He couldn’t read her expression, other than confusion.   After a few beats, she said, “Yikes.”

“Are you angry with me?” His heart beat faster in his chest at the notion that he may have just signed his own death warrant in terms of marital trust.

Mindy shook her head, “No."

"No?" Danny couldn't believe his luck.

"No." Mindy met his eye, and there was nothing in her gaze that denoted anger or annoyance or displeasure of any kind.  "Really, no."

Danny gave her a quizzical look, his eyebrows furrowing. “I’m terrified of you right now.”

“No, don’t be.” Mindy smiled, and it almost seemed to reach her eyes. “I understand why you didn’t tell me right away. And why you’d tell me now. I know you mean well.  Danny, seriously..."  She trailed off when she realized that he was still holding his breath. "Breathe, Danny.  It's okay.  We're okay."

"I'll never do it again." He said, quickly.

She smiled again. "I want you to protect me, Danny, I do.  And I'm glad that you want to, too. That's what husbands do.  However misguided, you were really just trying to help.  But," Mindy stood up, looming over him and only slightly threateningly, she said, "But no, don't do it again."  She tugged on his hand.  "Come on babe, we don't want to be late."

Danny allowed himself to be tugged, his heart still thundering in his chest.

 

* * *

 

Despite the good talk, Danny was still edgy as he drove out to the Hamptons, the vein in his neck standing out as he merged into traffic on the Montauk Highway. “Left hand turns are ruining America!”

Mindy reached out to stroke his hand on the gear shift, attempting to be comforting. “Just grab Richie and talk to him. You’ll feel better.”

“I already talked to him. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. You’re wired for sound right now. And I know it’s partially because you’re worried about him being angry with you. If you could be punishing yourself right now with push ups, you would be.”

Danny glanced at his wife out of the corner of his eye because damnit, push-ups did sound fantastic. “No, you’re right. It’s not fine. I made him feel bad, I lied to you. I’m batting a fucking thousand tonight.”

“Can we make a deal?” Mindy patted his thigh, walking her fingers up toward his groin. “Let’s table everything until tomorrow. We’re going to a party. Let’s party. All this other stuff…it can wait. When was the last time we danced? I’m excited to witness some good old fashioned Danny Castellano dance moves again.”

As if summoned by fate, _Thunder Road_ came over the car speakers. (Granted, Danny listened to about three different CDs, so it wasn’t all _that_ fateful.) Danny took a few beats. “I guess there’s nothing left to do except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair,” he sing-talked to her, and normally, it would have been so corny that she’d have laughed directly in his face and then flipped the CD to Rihanna.

Instead she sang back, “Well the night's busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere..." and suddenly, there was the tiniest bit of Danny Castellano that felt like maybe he could get through this night as long as he had Mindy by his side.


	7. Fight Night

“Well, it’s been ten minutes, and your mother has insulted me three times and referred to me as ethnic looking when she introduced me to your Uncle Silvio. So that’s a new record.” Mindy had found Danny over by the bar where he chatted with Morgan, who had been enlisted to run mother in law interference for the evening, if needed.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “As in, “This is Mindy, Danny’s wife, isn’t she ethnic looking?””

“It’s like you were there.” Mindy sighed loudly, “Except you left out: second wife, and the moderately chubby modifier.”

He set his glass down heavily on the bar. “I have to kill her.”

“Please do not kill your mother in the middle of the gayest night of the year. Wait until we can dump her off the side of the boat and pretend she went overboard.” Mindy hooked her hand into Danny’s belt loop, under his suit coat. “I need a very large, very potent beverage.”

Summoning the bartender, Danny pulled Mindy closer, murmuring into her hair. “Just remember, I love you."  He stroked a hand down her back, "And in a few years, we can put her into a highly mismanaged old folks home.”

“Oh, Daniel. I’m already making a paper chain to count down the days.” Mindy stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, as he guided a fresh mojito into her hand. “Come on, Johnny Castle, let’s go dance.” She pulled him onto the dance floor, sipping her drink as she went.

Danny loosened his tie and followed his wife.

Dancing he could handle.

 

* * *

 

After about six songs and one ill-fated dip, Danny left Morgan in charge of Mindy while he went outside to cool off and get some fresh air.

Morgan leaned up against a pillar and shouted over Taylor Swift, "You and Dr. C seem like you're really having a great time.  You looked like Fred Astaire and that other lady out on the dance floor." 

Mindy gave him a dirty look. "I'm assuming that you're referring to Danny as 'that other lady'?" 

He stammered.  "Y--yes." 

"This party is pretty great, isn't it?  I love these gift bags."  Mindy held up one of the yellow Marriage Equality tote bags that they'd been handed on entry that were emblazoned with the words "Totes Gay" and full of adorable party swag.  She wasn't quite sure what she was going to do with an inflatable unicorn drink holder but she had a sneaking suspicion that she'd find some purpose for it without ever getting near a swimming pool. 

She didn't even notice Danny's mother standing in the group of women next to her, gesticulating loudly until she heard:

“At least Richie is giving me grandchildren.”

Before she knew what was happening, something came loose in Mindy’s brain. "What is wrong with you, you tiny troll?" She shouted at her mother in law, all the pent up accusations and recriminations that she'd ever thought over the years of passive aggressive and downright aggressive-aggressive slights and arguments spewing onto the dance floor like a newly opened fire hydrant.  Mindy couldn’t see or hear anyone else, just the sound of her own heart beating in her ears. A pair of strong arms closed around her waist and suddenly, she was three feet in the air and hovering over her stunned mother-in-law like a resentful ghost.  It took more than a few moments to register that it wasn’t Danny holding her, but Morgan, and she didn't see Danny anywhere. She hurled another stream of expletives in his mother's direction, words she'd only seen graffitied on the subway walls but hadn't ever had the opportunity to use.  Until now.

Mrs. Castellano stood stunned, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, and as Morgan turned, Mindy caught sight of Danny.  He was off to the side, his brows furrowed, looking stricken and angry. Very angry. And from the glimpse that she had had as Morgan whirled her around and away from the crowd, it seemed highly likely that his anger was predominantly directed toward her.

Mindy broke free from Morgan’s grasp - which wasn’t easy, because Morgan played prison rules in most altercations - and ran toward the exit.

 


	8. You Can’t Carry It With You If You Want to Survive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I was trying to get; it's not the end, yet.

It didn't take long for Danny to find her where she sat on a bench that overlooked the harbor.

“Come here often?” He sat down next to her, rubbing his hands over his face.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself. That was quite a show you guys put on back there.” It seemed like he was afraid to say more than a few words at a time, as if he was selecting his thoughts with a pair of tweezers. _Grip, squeeze, choose; grip, squeeze, choose._

“I know, I embarrassed myself and you and Richie…and I said things to your Ma that…”

Danny held up his hand to halt her apology. “No, I can't say it was your proudest moment. Or mine, for that matter.”

Mindy felt her stomach lurch. She didn’t like the slow way he was talking, how eerily calm he was. All the molecules in the air around them had changed; he was looking at her like she was a stranger, or an alien that he’d encountered on public transit. She thought about how long ago it was that he was afraid to love her, even to kiss her, because he was afraid that he would ruin it, and how easily she was ruining things now, when all she wanted to do was make them right. “It’s me, Danny, c’mon, please look at me.”

He continued to stare out at the boats in the marina, his profile illuminated in the moonlight. “This isn’t easy for either of us, I know.”

“I don’t know what’s happening right now.” Mindy could feel the hot tears starting at the back of her throat, burning at her nose. “Please don’t leave me. Please.”

Danny turned, then, and she caught the moisture in his eyes, and the way his mouth turned down. “Jesus, Min, I’m not going to leave you. But I feel like you keep trying to talk me into it.”

“No, I-I--"

Danny continued, “I'm never gonna leave you, Mindy. I made promises. I promised you in front of our family and friends and God and some four armed blue guy,” Danny paused, still staring at the lights on the marina, and steadfastly refusing to look her in the eye. “I promised to stick by you, right? I remember there was stuff about better or worse, for sure. And then there was the bit about sickness, health, the whole thing. Danny Castellano does not break promises.”

“But Danny Castellano does refer to himself in the third person.” Mindy interjected, attempting to lighten the mood but he was immovable. It felt so strange to sit next to Danny without him touching her in some way. He always found some way to snake a hand onto her back, or push her hair behind her ear, or to lightly stroke her hand. During a partner’s meeting once, he had traced letters into Mindy’s leg as she talked, and she later realized he was spelling  _I love_   _you._

Danny didn’t smile. “Hey, I know that you’re coming from a dark place right now, Min, I get that. But you gotta know, you _have_ to know, this isn’t your fault.” Something in his tone, in his words, caused her to flash back to the anesthesiologist whose name she could never remember, and the way that he had looked at her with very kind eyes, and told her that there wasn’t anything she could have done differently.  He'd touched the back of her hand as she was falling asleep and repeated _it's not your fault_. “And it’s not mine, either. We’re in this together.”

“Your words are kind but your body language is scaring me, Danny.” She poked at his thigh carefully.  She just wished he'd turn, he'd look at her.  That she could see him, all of him, and that they could close this distance.

“This whole thing is scaring me, Mindy! All of it. Do you really think that this is all I want? That if you can’t give me a child, then I don’t want you either? Do you really think that little of me?” The volume of his voice rose in conjunction with the height of his already tensed shoulders.

“Sometimes I don’t know what I believe.” She told him, and it was the truth.

“Come on, Mindy, I’m always going to choose you. If you had been six or eight weeks further along, maybe we could have saved the baby. This time we could only save you.” His voice creaked, and finally crumbled, and Mindy slid closer to him on the bench, unable to allow him to be so broken by himself. She had never seen Danny cry outside of that hospital room in front of their friends. He hadn't ever even talked about that night again, not after everything had happened.

“What are you talking about? I’m fine.”

“You _weren’t_ fine. You’d lost so much blood, and gone into shock, and…I thought I was going to lose both of you.” Danny swiped his palms over his eyes, clearing away the tears. He sniffled.  “You know, I’m starting to think that the Castellano Curse is never being able to hold onto a good thing.”

“I cry every day in the shower.” Mindy blurted, the stillness too much to bear without filling it somehow.  Danny finally reached for her hand, then, and she was relieved enough that she thought she’d weep from the sheer force of it. “It’s the one time I feel like I can allow myself the time to cry, because I don’t want to do it at work, every time I see a baby born, or when you’re watching me, with that expectant, hovering look on your face. There are so many things that I haven’t told you that I was feeling, because I thought I couldn’t…Maybe I thought that I was protecting you, but really, I was hurting you. I keep hurting you.” Maybe she was actually _pushing_ Danny away, so that she wouldn’t have to feel responsible anymore.  That her inability to maintain a pregnancy, or to conceive again, was the reason that he would be distant. She was making the choice for him, instead of allowing him to choose for himself. 

Danny pressed his lips together, causing them to disappear entirely, his face still wet with tears. “You don’t have to carry this by yourself. This isn’t your cross to bear. It’s ours.”

“How is it that you’re not the one falling apart here? Because of the two of us, with your level of neuroses, no offense…”

He gave a feeble laugh. “I don’t know. I guess I just decided one of us had to keep it together and it was fair for it to be my turn.” Danny kicked the side of the bench with his toe, sighing. “Because I’m accustomed to things getting real fucked up.”

When Danny finally turned toward her, the lights of the marina playing shadow and shapes with his face, she didn’t see the abject pity or reproach that her mother-in-law had often conveyed, nor the sympathy of her friends and family members.  What she read there, in the smudged lines and the opaque shadows, was deep, empathetic care and concern.  Danny had experienced the same awful chain of events, even if it had been from a different perspective. They shouldn't be separated by what had happened, they should be drawn closer together.

“I didn’t ever see his face, and I love him so much. How is that possible?”

“It’s possible.” Danny looked down at his hands, and began to move toward his pocket. He pulled out a tiny square of folded paper, and gently placed it in her hand. “I think you need to see this.”

“ _More_ secrets, Danny? I don’t know if I can handle…” Her breath left her body when she realized what she holding. “Is this him?” Her voice was small and thready with emotion. “The baby?”

“I always thought that we should have named him. The nurse, she asked me, but…” Danny’s head dropped, “I didn’t have…you weren’t there…It didn’t seem right to name him without you.”

Mindy opened the sonogram photos, smoothing the two pictures against her leg. She could feel Danny tensing beside her, holding his breath. He was forever holding his breath lately. “He’s beautiful.”

“He looks like you.” Danny slid his arm around her, encircling her waist, dropping his head on her shoulder. “He has your nose.”

“And your chin.” Mindy caressed Danny’s face, and he kissed her wrist as she dropped her hand, “He was gorgeous, wasn’t he?” Her heart felt very full and very empty, all at once.

“We’re going to get this someday, Min.” Danny traced the baby’s image, pausing near his wife’s fingers. “And when we do, we’re going to know that all of this was worth it.”

Mindy had always told Danny that he had an over developed lizard brain: the part of the brain that is conditioned for survival, the one that contained the fight or flight response. She was more coddled than he was, and therefore her lizard brain didn’t really emerge very often. She didn’t need to potty train her little brother when she was 13 or pay the bills when she was 16 because her mom was too depressed to get out of bed and go to work cleaning hotel rooms. She didn’t get put in garbage cans and have hockey pucks shot at her to make her tough, or get regularly harassed for attending dance class instead of football practice. She wasn’t a full head shorter than every other guy in her class. Danny had been forced to survive, not just worry about keeping up his grades or whose pants he could get into on a Saturday night. Mindy was immensely thankful that his fight response was so much more developed than his flight. She loved that he stayed. He stayed and he fought. And she reaped the benefits.

“You know why I don’t like saying that we lost the baby?” Mindy asked in a small voice, not sure that she had the strength anymore.

Danny narrowed his eyes, like he was trying to parse out the reason somewhere beyond her and into the sea. “How come, Min?”

“Because it gives us this...this false hope that maybe we could _find_ the baby." Mindy’s voice broke, and the tears began to flow freely again. “He’s just gone, Danny. I never got to hold him, or see his face.  I didn't name him. I have to explain to people over and over things that are, frankly, inexplicable. And saying he’s lost - well, it just gives the impression that one day I might trip over one of my Gucci pumps and find him hiding behind a shoebox in the closet, or under my bed. And we both know that’s never going to happen, Danny.”  She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, the tears new and hot and salty down her cheeks. "It's just not."

A hand rubbed gently at her back, as they both listened to the bay lapping against the boat. It really was a beautiful night, clear and cool. “No, it’s not going to happen that way, you’re right. I’m sorry, Mindy, I’m so sorry.”

“I should have been telling you what I was feeling, I shouldn’t have kept it in.” The problem had been that Mindy didn’t know how to articulate that she was a childless mother.  Or that she was forcing herself to have some other purpose when all she wanted was this one thing, this one thing that seemed to elude her no matter what she tried. Every day she felt empty, and every day she was purposeless and less than. Less than her patients who managed to gestate successfully; less than her husband who seemed to be able to move through his grief through action and untold strength. “I’m ready to be normal again. I don’t know what the hell that means anymore, but I need it. I have to have it.”

Danny pulled Mindy into his lap, where she curled into a tight ball, her dress bunching around her knees, "I'm really ready for that, Min.  Like, insanely ready. Not just for you, though. For me. I've been a fucking disaster lately."  He cupped her face in his hands.  "I love you.  Severely." 

"I love you too, Danny."  They were both crying, and yet, she hadn't been happier in months.  "We've gotta just let it go.  We're not going to forget him, we're not.  But we can't live in it anymore.  I have to get outside of it, for both of us."

Danny kissed her nose, and her cheekbones, and her forehead.  "Believe me when I tell you that we're gonna be okay.  Believe me.  There isn't one thing in this life that I haven't had to work for, and I know that hard work pays off."  He smoothed his hand over the roundness of her backside.  "Believe me, Mindy."  He whispered, pleading.

He didn't have to plead. She believed him.


	9. More Heart, Less Attack

For the second time that evening, the Castellanos entered the crowded ballroom hand in hand. From the straightness of her back and directness of her stare, Danny knew that Mindy didn’t care if her make up was smeared and her hair looked like she’d allowed a bird to nest in it, or if there was a tiny tear in the back of her brand new Marc Jacobs dress. She was clearly on a mission.

“I have to find Ma.” Danny whispered into the shell of her ear.  There was a tiny purplish bruise beginning to form under her lobe and Danny brushed her hair back down to cover it, just in case.

“No, you find Richie. I’ll deal with Annette.” She knocked back the remains of a drink that someone had left unattended on the table they were standing near, and if that didn't indicate that Mindy was resolute in her statement, Danny didn't know what else did. Plus, Richie was about a thousand times more reasonable and understanding, so he was obviously getting the better end of the deal.

Danny leaned over to kiss Mindy fully and firmly. “Godspeed woman, and may mighty forces come to your aid.” He felt as if he was sending her off to war. It was clear that Mindy’s emotions were still so tender and close to the surface that it felt downright unfair to allow her to be alone with his mother. He just wanted to hold her (she held so well) and comfort her and be anywhere but in a room full of strangers who had witnessed her breakdown.

They separated, warily on Danny’s part. He could feel the exhaustion of the evening weighing down each of his limbs but he carried forward anyway.  If Mindy could face down Annette, he could certainly make things right with his little brother.

Scanning the throng of dancing revelers, Danny finally found Richie and Ramon over near the bar, canoodling like the newlyweds they were.  Extracting Richie from Ramon's hold, Danny pulled his brother to the side, his heart rate already increased ten-fold, “Is it alright if I say something?”

Richie paused, taking in Danny's bedraggled hair, rumpled suit, and the misbuttoned and lipstick-stained shirt underneath. He gave a knowing, yet mischievous smile. “Uh, Danny, have you, uh, had any sex recently?”

Danny blushed. The life boats were not optimum in comfort, but they got the job done in terms of availability and ease of use. After the brutal honesty of their conversation, making love seemed like the only logical choice to conclude it. “A real man doesn't kiss and tell.”

Ignoring the lack of true confirmation, Richie thumped him on the back enthusiastically.  “Geez, Dan, you’re getting more daring in your old age. I like it.”

“Listen, I need to talk to you, and then we can celebrate my ability to score with my own wife.” Even though Richie wasn’t nearly as intimidating as his own mother, Danny’s adrenaline was still spiking and he wanted to get this over this. He ran a wary hand over his face. “Rich, I’m sorry about the other day. And about what happened tonight.”

Richie waved him away and stepped a little closer as another partygoer bumped into his back. “You apologized already, really. I get it.”

“No, no, I know, but I don’t want you to think that I have any doubts about you, or you and Ramon as parents. Me freaking out was a product of everything that’s gone on with me and Mindy….not a reflection on you.”

The younger Castellano smiled. “I know, Danny. Thanks.” He was a good kid, Richie. He was even-tempered and patient, and Danny only ever worried about his financial decisions anymore. Why Richie and Ramon insisted on continuing to rent, Danny could never understand.

“I can be a real dick sometimes.”

“You’re fine, Dan. You’re harder on yourself than anybody else.”

“Nah, I was a dick.”

“It’s okay, Danny. I mean, you know I have an affinity for dicks. It works out.”

Danny rolled his eyes and charged through anyway. “And, and I do think that you’re gonna be a great dad.” His voice broke slightly, surprising them both. Richie’s face belied his concern, and Danny choked back whatever was threatening to rise up. He had watched Richie grow up, and now he was watching him outpace him into adulthood. Richie was going to have a baby. Danny hated thinking that the corollary to that statement was that he was not. He pushed down the urge to revel in a little self-pity party and in a miraculous feat of mental strength, he looked at the positive. Richie was going to have a baby. And he was going to do great.

“I learned from the best, Danny. You taught me everything I know, man.” Richie grabbed Danny and hugged him, “I love you.”

“I love you, Rich.”

Somewhere around their twelfth exchange of mutual affection and admiration, Ramon took them both by the shoulders and steered them back toward the party.  It had been a long night.

 

* * *

 

 

After three passes through the room, Mindy finally found Annette sitting at one of the back tables, nursing a glass of red wine and looking cross. Of course, she always sort of looked like she was ready to bite the head off of something, so it couldn’t really be considered a new look or one that had put there by someone specific. From the start of their fledgling relationship, Danny had always insisted on Sunday dinners with his mother on the Island, and it took Mindy about 56 of them to convince herself that it wasn’t Mindy that Mrs. Castellano disliked but all people in general, with the exception of Danny (her angel) and Richie (her bonus angel).

Mindy had tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she had been left with a child in diapers and a chubby teenager, and then been forced to work two jobs to support them.  And the fact that Annette was probably Superwoman strong to have gotten through it and raised her son to be such a beautiful person, well, Mindy figured that Mrs. Castellano had to have a lot of positive attributes too.  There were moments, when across the dinner table that she had seen in Mrs. Castellano’s dark brown eyes and in the set of her jaw, the reflection of her own husband. At those times, Mindy wondered if she hadn’t gotten to him when she did, if Danny would still be in the same kind of pain, with the same hardness about him. In some ways, that was exactly how she found him, right after Christina, doing whatever he could to stay indifferent, to stay alone. (Who purposefully dated a woman who reminded him of a white noise machine if not someone who had no intention of becoming attached to another person?) He was so entrenched in his own routine that he couldn’t see how destructive that same routine had become. Hell, he could bring Mindy to her knees with his unkindness at times—she could still see the glint in his eyes when he told her she could lose 15 pounds. Luckily for both of them, he had never been that cruel again. But all that self-loathing had caused him to lash out, continually, and she imagined that it was a matter of nurture versus nature. Maybe Danny's circumstances were very similar to those of her mother-in-law, and because of those similarities, she should have some sympathy, or maybe even empathy, for her plight. Maybe she and Mrs. Castellano were never going to be best friends or people who brunched and shopped together, but at the very least, they could call a truce.

“Annette?” Mindy found herself smoothing down her dress, and self-consciously attempting to correct the madness that had become her hair. Mrs. Castellano could look straight through her and make her feel like she was insignificant as the dirt on the bottom of her shoe, or make her want to apologize for her very existence. Mindy had spent years watching Danny succumb to his mother’s moods and strong will, so she figured that Annette was employing some kind of Sicilian hex or voodoo.

“Sit down, dear.” The older woman scooted over with her chair and made room for Mindy next to her. She inhaled deeply, “I think that I--I may have been accidentally insensitive to your situation.”  Truth be told, that statement was probably as close as she was going to get to admitting that she was wrong (the absolute monster part might have to wait) so Mindy decided that she could accept that in lieu of a proper apology.

“No, no, you weren’t. Like, at all."  Annette's gaze narrowed again, and Mindy found herself backtracking slightly. "B-But, I shouldn’t have said the things that I said tonight.” She'd blacked out right around _troll_ so after that, she wasn't certain of a word that she'd said. “So loudly.  Or publicly.  And you have to know that I didn’t mean them.”

Mrs. Castellano gave her a sideways look, “I’m sure that you did, Mindy.” She sighed. “But I do understand why you said them.”

This conversation was starting to make Mindy feel like she didn’t fit into her own skin anymore.  “I love your son more than anything in this world. Sometimes more than I love myself.” Mindy startled herself with her own admission.  She was a regular Jack-in-the-Box of self realizations tonight, they were popping out all over the place. “Sometimes when I see him across the room, or in the office, or at the bar over there, it actually takes my breath away. That is _my_ husband.” She could feel tears welling up and her voice clogging with her very real love for her husband. “He’s so sweet. And he’s so hard-working. He listens to me when I talk, and he thinks that I’m the most beautiful woman in the world. God, Annette, he’s such a good man. He might even be a great man, and I, I don’t think he got that way on his own.” She caught Danny's eye from where he was lurking near the bar, a worried expression on his face as he watched from afar.  Mindy knew how much was riding on this, how important this was to Danny.  He didn't need to have to choose between them.

Danny tried to pretend that he hadn't been staring and then gave her a tiny embarrassed wave, along with that lopsided half smile that made her heart flutter, no many how many times she saw it.

“He is a good boy.” Mrs. Castellano swirled her wine in its glass.  Mindy briefly considered the fact that neither of them had resorted to physical violence, nor had Annette made any direct reference to Mindy's weight and/or skin color had to mean that progress was currently being made.  Slow as it was.

“I never would have gotten through these last few months if it wasn’t for Danny.” At that, Mindy’s tears finally broke free, and she swiped them away. Mrs. Castellano was quick to offer a tissue from out of her purse, which Mindy accepted without argument. “He’s been…my hero.” Mindy paused to blow her nose.  She was actually starting to long for the awful, terribly simple days of coming to parties to do stupid things like get back at her ex.  She'd rather ride fifty more bikes into fifty more freezing pools than feel the pain of this loss anymore or to have to relive it with one more person who couldn't seem to understand it for themselves.

Mrs. Castellano patted her hand. “I don't talk about it much, but there wasn’t supposed to be such a big gap in age between Danny and Richie, and," Annette stared down at the white tablecloth, "It's just-I know what it’s like, is what I’m saying.”

“I had no idea.” Mindy swallowed, feeling the rising tide of her emotion beginning to ebb.  This was going to get easier. It had to.

“I doubt Danny remembers…it’s not something we did a lot of talking about.” Her mother in law fiddled with one of the place settings, eyes darting, but not making contact with Mindy.

 "How did you…were you scared to keep trying?”

Mrs. Castellano looked around, perhaps for an escape hatch. Mindy wasn’t sure if she’d ever been alone with Annette for this length of time. Danny would usually have intervened by now. Or rescued her, whichever was necessary. “Of course we were scared, dear. But like my mother always used to say, Christopher Columbus took a risk.”

“Oh, like YOLO.” Mindy brightened.

Mrs. Castellano didn’t smile. “I don’t know what you’re saying, dear, but hare Krishna to you as well.”

“No, it’s a saying; you only live---“

Danny’s mother continued without acknowledgement, “Columbus didn’t know if the world was flat or if he was going to sail right off the edge, but he still got on the ship. You and Danny, you still need to get on the ship. Even though you don’t know if you’re going to sail off the edge. That’s brave, right there. I only ever asked him to be brave.” Her voice had trailed off, and Mindy knew that she was thinking about things that had happened years ago, and not the here and now. Mindy couldn’t help but picture Danny as a little boy, all chubby and responsible, always wanting to please his mother, because he didn’t want her to take off in the middle of the night either. And she compared that image to present day Danny and realized that although they probably weighed the same, Young Danny and Current Danny probably weren’t all that different, either.

They were all the same, Annette and Danny and Mindy, losing things that were never coming back. “You’re my cautionary tale!” Mindy said, rather loudly, jerking them both back into reality. She hadn’t meant to say it outside of her own head. Her inner narrator was forever fighting to get out.

Mrs. Castellano was briefly confused, but she handled Mindy’s outburst with aplomb. “My mother had another saying, too. ‘There’s a lid for every pot!’” She considered the stem of her glass, tilting the dregs of her wine dangerously close to the white linen. “There’s a light in him, when he’s with you. I need to stop trying to put it out.”

“Annette, I-I-I'd appreciate that." Mindy stammered and smiled. Maybe they could finally stop circling each other like territorial wolverines at Sunday dinner now. In her heart, Mindy knew that having a seven minute chat wasn’t going to just suddenly shift all of their perspectives and solve all of their problems but it was a start.  A really promising start.

“And you won’t scream obscenities at me in public anymore?” Her mother in law pushed.

“Only on Tuesdays.”

“Thank you. I’ll take it.” She held out her hand for Mindy to shake and Mindy obliged.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Danny popped up behind his mother, his face expectant. “How’s tricks?”

“It’s fine now, Daniel. We talked. We have an understanding.”

“I can curse at her on Tuesdays.” Mindy piped in.

“That's wonderful, sweetheart.” Danny patted Mindy's back and helped her out of her chair, lacing his fingers through hers and pulling her hand to his lips. “Listen, Ma,” Danny cleared his throat. He did not make a practice of standing up to his mother. Generally because she could cut him down with one well placed reference to some wrong he’d committed in the mid 1990s and send him scurrying back to his hideout. “I know that Mindy said a lot of things earlier.  Maybe some things that didn’t need to be said, and some that probably did."  He continued on. "But we need you to be supportive, not subversive. Life is hard enough.”

Mindy quickly registered the surprisingly sheepish expression on Annette’s face. Everything was coming up Mindy tonight all of a sudden. Mrs. Castellano shook her head. “Of course, dear.”

Danny leaned over and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Good.  As long as we’ve got that settled, I would like to dance with my wife now.”

After they had found their way back onto the crowded dance floor, Danny leaned his forehead against Mindy's and squared his body with hers by placing a hand low on her hip. “I think you might have succeeded into officially frightening my mother into submission. Well played, Lahiri.” His eyes twinkled. “You’re going to need to teach me your ways.”

“This is the best and the worst party I’ve ever been to.” Mindy wrapped her arms around Danny, burrowing her face into his neck where it was apparent that traces of her lipstick still remained. He smelled like sweat and cigarette smoke (damnit, Danny!) and something that was uniquely him, like leather and sandalwood and home.  Danny stroked the back of her hair, smoothing down some of the ruffled edges. “I'd like for you to take me home now, Danny.”

Danny stepped back slightly, not wanting to release his hold. “Are you okay?”

Mindy nodded. “Yeah, I promise, I really am. But I would kill for a bubble bath, and a back rub, and snuggling with this really hot little Italian guy that I’ve had my eye on…”

“Little? Really?” Danny raised an eyebrow, but smiled anyway. “Aw, fuck it. Let’s blow this Popsicle stand.” He reluctantly loosened his hold on her waist, and held her hand as they fought past the other party goers to get back outside into the cool evening air.

The blue-black sky sparkled with stars and the noise and music of the party faded behind them, the night already a memory.

Just before they got to the parking lot, their feet still on the dock, Mindy stopped suddenly.  Pieces of Danny’s hair were sticking to his forehead with sweat, and Mindy pushed them back gently. They stood still for a moment, just watching the lights of the marina. “I almost remember what it’s like to be happy, y’know?” She said, finally, in a small voice.

Danny eased his arm around Mindy’s shoulder, squeezing her to his side. He kissed her forehead, and her eyelid, and her cheekbone. “You’ll get there. We’ll get there. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”

She raised an eyebrow, “Um, this is your family. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be here without you.”

“That’s not…Mindy, you know that’s not what I mean. I just know that if you wouldn’t have let me..if you hadn’t taken the chance on me…Listen, I know I’m not out there, always having a bunch of feelings." He pronounced feelings like it was a dirty word. "I will never be that guy. But you have to know, all the feelings I have, they’re pretty much…they belong to you. They’re because of you.” His voice was low, so low that she could barely hear him over the lapping ocean. On their wedding day, his voice had dipped to a level so faint and so subdued that no one beyond the wedding party could hear him say his vows.  So, it was pretty well-documented that Danny could barely squeeze words about sentiment over his vocal chords. (Unless he was in a women’s restroom, trying to prove himself; then he could shout them out to the urine cups and angry, catfished ex-girlfriends.)

They leaned against each other, their arms linked. “I'm so proud. I feel like I just Eliza Doolittled you. But instead of manners, you're articulating feelings like a boss.”

Danny turned his face so that his nose nudged her ear. “Only for you.”

They started walking again, toward their car, edging toward the bed and breakfast where they were staying the night.

Mindy couldn’t wait to splay out over an overstuffed mattress in a flowery room, tracing patterns onto Danny’s naked back while he curled up next to her.

Maybe he’d play with her hair, or rub little circles on her shoulders, or rest his head on her breasts and gaze up at her with that tiny smile playing on his lips. Maybe he’d get up early to go find her those flaky croissants that she liked one weekend they visited Colin and Anna here; or maybe she’d find him in the shower, soapy and just the right kind of tired. Maybe they could find a farmer’s market or sit on the wrought iron patio of a quaint outdoor café.

The possibility of finding contentment in the next twelve hours seemed so close, so utterly reachable, that it was suddenly very important to her to get to the car. Twelve hours could become twenty four, could become forty eight, could become a week, maybe more. She could find what she had misplaced, what she had overlooked, for these months. She could find the small moments, the ones that added up to the larger ones; that added up to everything she needed to recover, to heal, and to start again.


	10. You Were Born

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think the Chapter Title says it all.  
> "You were born to make this right."-Cloud Cult, You Were Born

Mindy and Danny spent the next thirty nine and a half weeks walking a tightrope of anxiety and tension, fully expecting to lose their balance and topple to the ground below.

As it turned out, they never once did either of them fall.

When Mindy first realized that she was pregnant for the second time, she had quietly crawled into bed with her still sleeping husband, carefully holding the white stick with the blue cross that was wadded in a swath of toilet paper. Not a shred of fall foliage was invoked. She poked him awake with her freezing cold toes, and thrust the tissue-covered stick into his bleary face. Later he told her that he wasn’t sure if she wanted him to blow his nose or help her blow her own, so it took a few seconds before the revelation registered.  Mindy had never seen Danny come to attention so quickly or so thoroughly.  Of course, when he jumped out of bed, he promptly stubbed his toe on the nightstand and commenced enumerating a string of expletives that rivaled the _Scarface_ movie, but the most important fact remained:  _We're pregnant._

They had never been happier, or more relieved.

Of course Mindy’s pregnancy was deemed “high risk”, so as a result, she was closely monitored. There was a possibility that the same placental abruption could occur again during this pregnancy, and until the baby was safely delivered, Danny and Mindy were saddled with the the knowledge that there would be no safe zone, no amount of weeks where the fear could safely pass and security take its place. They were just going to have to get through it.

Luckily, Mindy was a master of the art of distraction.  She fell in love terrible reality television shows and entertained herself by spending hours on the internet as a lookie-loo into other people's lives.  Danny found research to be most comforting, and he pored over medical journals like he was back in medical school, and it seemed like he was forever reading something that was highlighted within an inch of its life. He slipped parenting advice onto her iPod playlist in the form of podcasts, fed her green vegetables disguised as smoothies, and obsessively counted Mindy's protein intake for fetal brain development. There was never enough folic acid anywhere and he steadfastly insisted that Mindy avoid any activity that could be considered jostling to a fetus, which Mindy really didn't mind because that included things like taking the stairs and regular exercise.  He hid her high heels. Which she minded a little more than the exercise thing, but her ankles were pretty swollen anyhow. If he could have wrapped her in bubble wrap and rolled her into a closet to keep her from harm, he absolutely would have.

For nine months, they watched her belly swell, listened to the baby’s heart beat every night before they slept, and swore to each other that they would never take for granted one developmental milestone or one late night feeding.

Benjamin Anthony Castellano was born on May 19th, at 11:18 a.m., after eight hours of labor and forty five minutes of pushing, with some of the highest APGAR scores the Labor and Delivery floor had ever seen (well, that was the story they were giving the overachieving Castellanos, anyway). He was seven pounds, twelve ounces of pure, unadulterated baby Danny Castellano. Maybe it was his red and angry face when he cried, his thick mane of black curls (so _that_ explained the tremendous heart burn), or his disproportionally giant hands, but he was a caramel hued miniature version of his father.   It was so eerily precious that their friends and family could not stop commenting on it. Peter actually handed the baby back to Danny at one point and remarked, “I didn’t know which one of you I was holding for at least the first three minutes.”

Mindy finally had a new memory to look back on in her hospital room. She could now reminisce about Danny, sitting next to the bed, beaming with pride. “You were so brave.”

This time, when he teared up, no one fled.  

Ramon and Richie held their eight month old daughter, Elena, and presented her to her brand new cousin.

Jeremy and Peter handed out cigars. Morgan brought a puppy, which was immediately confiscated (temporarily) by security. Beverly filled her large purse with hospital issue diapers and Vaseline, while Tamra oohed and ahhed over all the flowers that had arrived to celebrate Ben’s arrival. The Lahiris and Mrs. Castellano held court in the lobby, accepting well wishers with open arms.  The magical, mythical Benjamin had arrived, and he'd made his parent's earlier pain so much less relevant.   It wasn't forgotten, and it probably couldn't be, but through the rush of endorphins and adrenaline, and sheer, unadulterated love produced in the throes of childbirth,  the jagged edges of their previous experience had swiftly been tamped down.

 

* * *

 

 

In his first five days of life, Benjamin Anthony Castellano was learning to adjust to the new environment outside the safety of his mother’s womb, and like his father, he seemed to be finding everything a little too noisy and a little too bright. Also like his father, he was a vocal and vociferous complainer.  Mindy had already found the fastest way to ease Ben's version of a sternly worded letter to the editor was rapid exposure to her now swollen and milk-heavy bosoms, again following in the footsteps of the elder Castellano.  (Her ass didn't really aid in soothing anyone but Danny.)

Danny accepted the finally quiet baby, milky and warm from his recent feeding, from a tired Mindy.  Ben always smelled so good and his breath was so sweet that Danny couldn’t seem to stop nuzzling at him like a mother bear. The baby’s head lolled in his post-nursing haze and he gazed up at Danny with half-lidded, milk-drunk eyes. 

It did not seem possible for Danny love someone more, medically or metaphysically.

Despite the intensely devastating sleep deprivation (thanks to the fact that he couldn’t stop hopping up at every sound Ben made in the night, and if he was quiet for a long stretch, Danny was up then too), with his son in his arms, Danny could not have been happier. He glanced over at Mindy, who was still lolling on the sofa despite her earlier declared intention to nap, wearing baggy sweats and an old t-shirt of Danny’s.  Her hair was piled on her head in a madcap fashion and her face devoid of make-up and if looked at himself in the mirror, he didn't figure he'd see much difference.  They both looked as if they’d been marooned on a desert island and were on their last ration of coconut and airplane vodka.

When Mindy suddenly began to cry, Danny worried that they were more than just tears of joy, or of waking up every hour on the hour for another human being to attach himself to her breast. “Min, what’s going on?” When Danny was exhausted his Staten accent became more pronounced. (He was inexplicably immensely aroused when Mindy’s Boston emerged, usually when she was drunk. He once made her repeat, “I parked my car in the Harvard yard” until he was brought to orgasm, with minimal physical contact. He wasn’t proud of it, but it was what it was.)

“What if we can’t do this? What if we’re terrible parents? He’s so tiny, and perfect, and he seems very suspicious of me.”

Danny reached out and gently touched her cheek, “We can do this.”

“Okay, Smarty Pants, what are we supposed to do now? We have him; he’s in our house, now what?”

“I think we’re supposed to sleep when he sleeps, Min.” Danny considered slowly, running his hand through the hair that he’d been growing out since Mindy got pregnant. He told her he wouldn’t cut it until the baby was born, even if it stuck out all over in its middle stages and had patches of gray in it. As a result, Mindy told him that he looked like a hobo on a regular basis. (She swore to him that she didn’t mean it though.  Because she also spent hairs running her fingers through it as he would lay with his head on her lap and talk to the unborn baby, and he was pretty sure he'd overheard her telling Morgan that the longer hair and new beard made him look like a super cute hipster dad.) He felt like not cutting his hair was his pregnancy solidarity gesture, but deep down, he felt it was more superstition on his part. He hadn’t cut it because he had forgotten to do it the week that Ben was conceived, and he didn’t want to do anything afterward that might have done anything to alter his clearly precarious juju.

Mindy patted Danny’s leg, and followed that movement by brushing the top of the baby’s head. Danny had noticed that she could no longer touch him without touching the baby, as if she was subconsciously compelled to create physical symmetry. “How are you so calm?”

Danny shrugged. “I’m not. But for thousands of years, people have been doing this, and we’ve survived, as the human race. So, someone has to know something, right?” Ben made a mewling noise and his face scrunched into what looked like it could become problematic, but Danny made the appropriate patting and rocking motions that abated any potential crying episode. “Plus, we’re two rich, smart doctors. Worse comes to worse, we hire somebody that figures it out for us.” He smiled. Mindy had joked about nannies but they both knew Danny was never going to allow that. He enjoyed being in control too much. “Listen, I’ve got Ben. Why don’t you take a shower or a nap or read a magazine? Do something for you. You’ve been _My Mother, My Milk Truck_ 24/7 the last five days.”

Mindy acquiesced, knowing that even fifteen minutes of uninterrupted sleep was better than zero. She gave Danny and the baby quick pecks and trotted back to her welcoming, comfortable overstuffed bed.

With Mindy safely out of the way, Danny quickly texted Morgan and twenty minutes later, answered the door before Morgan even had the chance to knock.

“This is incredible, Dr. C, and little baby Dr. C.” Morgan went to smooch at Ben, who Danny deftly swooped away from Morgan’s puckered lips in order to avoid the parade of germs that would certainly be incoming.

“Can I hold him?” Danny begrudgingly handed the sleeping baby over to his lumbering friend, and stood back to admire the large gingerbread style playhouse that Morgan had just wheeled in from the hallway. It was larger than Danny had originally intended, but he had been working on it for six months, along with a man who made miniatures to compose the rooms inside.  Mindy had bought herself a large diamond ring as a push present (something Danny did not entirely understand until he witnessed his own wife's sweaty and exhausted self expelling a small human through her own vagina, and then he realized that maybe he should have bought her all the diamonds, and not just some piddly ring) but he wanted to give her and the baby something that was both personal and that could be passed down to Ben's children.  Danny couldn't really adequately explain it, but once he had become a father, it suddenly felt like everything had to mean _something_ all the time.

Morgan murmured in a soft voice and shifted his hips back and forth in a rocking motion. “That playhouse is amazeballs, Doc. I think I might move into it. Just temporarily. Til Grandma is ready to let me out of the cellar.”

Danny shook his head, more vehemently than strictly required. “No. It’s not for…Ugh, Morgan.” He was too tired to insult him. “Do you think Mindy will like it? Do you think she’ll get it?”

“What’s to get? It’s a big house that Ben can play with that looks like…” Danny pushed on the hinges that connected the roof, and opened the playhouse to reveal rooms with miniature items, one even identical to the room that Morgan and Danny were already standing in. “Holy crap, Dr. C. It’s Reception! And the doctor’s lounge at the hospital. Look, there’s…is that Exam Room 2 at the office? It’s so life like!” Morgan marveled at the structure. “I’m totally moving in.”

“You’re not moving in.” Danny resisted the urge to wrest his child from Morgan’s arms and shove the larger man out the front door. “I think that it turned out great. Better than I could have imagined.” His voice went a little high with emotion, and he watched as Morgan schooled his features into something that didn't resemble shock.

"It's beautiful.  She's gonna love it."  Morgan shifted Ben in preparation to let go and return him to his father.  "All right, buddy, Uncle Morgan has to go get your puppy spayed..."

"No puppies!"  Danny said, louder than he meant to.  God, Morgan was going to manage to ruin this surprise for everyone yet.  Ben squawked in protest, but through a complicated series of patting and bouncing motions, Danny was able to coax him back into a fitful slumber. 

He thanked Morgan for his assistance and settled Ben into his sleeper, hoping to eke out a few minutes of peace so that he could finish off his tasks before everyone was fully awake again.  Danny searched through his desk for a pen and paper, watching Ben sleep out of the corner of his eye, and finding it, he began to write:

 

 

Mindy,

_I thought about it and thought about it, and I just kept coming back to this idea that we needed a family heirloom.  Something to show Benjamin that we’re more than just his parents, that we have a history.  Something that would show him that the love we made is greater than the love we took. That no matter what happens in his life, he came from two people who dreamed of him, who fought for him, who survived for him. I wanted something that would last, that would outlive us, even after we're gone._

_It may seem silly and maybe overly sentimental (and I am absolutely starting to feel like my grandmother on Sundays after Mass, when she’d have too much wine and start weeping about Sinatra), but I found a man in Brooklyn who makes replicas. You take him a photograph, and he can duplicate anything in miniature. He is, obviously, incredible. I took him a picture of one my gingerbread houses, and together, we designed this, with each room representing a piece of us; places that meant something, places that added up to Ben being born. So little by little, I kept taking pictures. I took a picture of your office at Shulman, because that’s where I was too chicken to kiss you, but brave enough to do that ridiculous dance. I snapped a picture of the women’s restroom there, too, much to Tamra’s shock and dismay (related: we may need to look into a lawyer) where you told me you didn’t want to be the stupidest person in the world but you came anyway.  I went back up to the Empire State Building’s observation deck. As I thought about it, it just seemed like there were a million more places that I knew that I loved you. I needed to photograph the back of airplanes, sushi restaurants after disastrous double dates, the doctor’s lounge, medical conferences, subway cars, life boats on yachts in the Hamptons, art galleries, MMA fights, the shower in my old apartment, the shower in our new apartment, my Ma’s dinner table, hospital beds, elevators, cabs, news stations, over the operating table; literally everywhere I have ever been with you.  
_

_I realized then that the dollhouse maker couldn’t build the Taj Mahal (although that too was built for purely romantic reasons) but I was making a museum of sorts, The Museum of Mindy and Danny, something that could stand in perpetuity, that anyone could see and know that we were built to last._

_I understand that it is an odd thing for me to do, because what does a tiny lit up vending machine with miniature candy bars have to do with how much I love you? Maybe nothing. But I think I needed Ben to see that we’re more than just two people who bicker incessantly and love him very much. That we're two people who took all these little stupid things, and did one very very smart thing.  We got together.  We stayed together.  We made a family.  Our love is real, because look at everything that lead up to it. I grew up knowing that marriages didn’t last, and that people leave, and that parents disappoint you because that is what parents do. I don’t want Ben to ever know what that feels like. I almost hate that I have to write this down, because words aren’t the things that are going to make or break us; actions are._

_And truthfully, I am not afraid of any of the things you could say to me, I am afraid of what you **don’t** say. _

_Those months after we couldn't save the baby were absolutely the hardest of my life, and Min, I know what it is like to lose. Not my dad walking out, not Christina doing, well, what Christina did, not breaking up with you out of cowardice—none of those things compared to the passing of our first son. One of the hardest parts of those months, I swear to you, was that I knew that you were holding back. That there was more underneath that you couldn’t say to me, and I have never been more terrified of what lived out in the edges of the atmosphere than in that time. I think I know you pretty well; what kind of bread you like, where you always leave your cell phone, where to kiss you so that you make that purring sound, and how to parlay that purring sound into…other sounds (hey, someone might read this; I am not writing smut that our child might find). But I had no idea what it could possibly be that you were too afraid to say to me. And I lived every day in a state of fear that this would be the day that you finally said the unsaid; and I would be alone again, or worse. (I truly have no idea what is worse than not having you. I do not want to know.)_

_But we got through it. I don’t know how, plus I don’t know if I could repeat it again if I had to, (and I hope to God I never have to) but we fucking survived. We survived and we made Ben. In a life boat. On a yacht. Nothing makes sense, but it all comes together in the end, right?_

_I used to hate the beginning of things. I hated how uncertain everything could be, and tenuous, and how small and finite I felt every time something new started. I was the chorus to every sad love song that you ever blasted through the office while I was trying to do paperwork. Truthfully, it was really starting to piss me off._

_Beginnings always became endings. Endings circled into new beginnings, which became…you get the picture. But Ben, Ben, Ben. He is my greatest beginning. He is **our** greatest beginning. I’m not dreading the beginnings anymore, because I know that this beginning is our family, and our family is everything I ever wanted.  _

_So this is what I made for our family heirloom; the house that Mindy and Danny and Ben built._

_I love you,  
_

_Dan_

 

_Benjamin,_

_I am writing you this letter while you sleep in a basket (don’t worry, it’s a fancy basket. Like your mom would allow anything less) three feet from me, and your Mom is asleep, too, and it feels like you’ve always been here. I don’t even remember anymore what life was like before you two._

_I can’t promise that your heart will never be broken, that you will never be disappointed, that your mom and I will always have the right answers or that we won’t make mistakes. It is highly likely that I will often judge your decisions harshly while still wishing you a lifetime of happiness. I have more wishes for you, and how you’ll turn out, than there are stars in the sky, especially more than you can see in Manhattan. (Side Note: Pollution, what’s up with that?)_

_I don’t want to tell you all that I wish for you, either, because I don’t want to hold you back. I want you to be limitless. Your potential is limitless; just like the love I have for you and your mother._

_Your mother. Ben, we got really lucky with your mom. She’s stubborn and she talks too fast and shops too much, and sometimes she mixes one too many patterns with her colors, but she is the answer to the all questions I have ever asked. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, because you’re going to figure it out on your own. Your mom is the best. Just the best. And she’s going to love you for everything that you are, and everything that you aren’t, and everything in between._

_I want to teach you so many things; how to throw a curve ball, to dance, what to do to outmaneuver a man trap (I’ll explain later) and how to fall into one if you really like her. (Pro Tip: Don’t get your coat. Just go to her; you might need those ten seconds.) I highly recommend being friends first, before you date someone. And just because you disagree about Every. Little. Thing. doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t jump in feet first.  I can teach you how to shave, the best way to manage that crazy hair you inherited from your old man, that Bruce Springsteen is a lyrical genius, and how to get your Mom to agree to pretty much anything (it took me a while to figure out, but it is totally possible). Life isn't easy, but I want you to learn that hard work is good, and it's necessary, and it's how we get by.  It's how I got by.  You're going to grow up so much differently than I did, it honestly blows my mind.  
_

_I’ve written two letters today and these are probably the most words I’ve ever deposited in one place in my entire life. I can’t promise that I’m always going to say the right things at the right times. I can’t promise that I’m going to be the cool dad (and Jesus, am I going to be the old dad), but I can promise I’m going to be a good dad._

_I thought about it a lot while your Mom was pregnant with you, what I would say to you when I first saw you. (Turns out I said something unintelligible, that no one can seem to remember.  Everything was happening so fast.  So let's revise history now and say that I said something very profound and meaningful.  Possibly I read you a Robert Frost poem, or the lyrics to Born to Run.)  I talked to you a lot when you were in her belly (this is anatomically inaccurate, but just go with it, you're age zero) and I wanted to tell you everything I saw and felt and tasted. People would ask me what I wanted you to know, or what parenting philosophy I had (what does that even mean? My philosophy: don’t mess this up. It works for everybody). I still don’t know exactly what it is. What does a father want for his son?_

_I want everything for you, Benjamin. Grow, adapt, flourish, and remember this: it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of you. You are Benjamin Anthony Castellano and that will always be enough for us._

_Love,_

_Your Dad_

_PS I made you this house.  I don't mind if you fill it with superheros or Lego figures or dinosaurs, but just know that we did it all for you._

 

To Danny's great surprise, neither Mindy nor Ben awoke before he was able to finish his missives.  He folded them into their individually labelled envelopes, and propped them against the two framed sonograms that sat on his desk.  Danny  kissed his sleeping son, and joined his slumbering wife in their bed.  Danny settled behind Mindy, resting his hand on her hip and bottom, and lightly brushed his lips across the expanse of her exposed neck.  "The life I wanted just happened to me."  He whispered, mostly to himself, and found himself drifting off into a well earned sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the bow.  
> Thank you to everyone who gave me such wonderful feedback and comments. I really love coming here everyday to read everyone's labors (see what I did there) and I found writing this to be a fantastic and cathartic experience. God Bless Mindy Kaling for creating such phenomenal characters that I am clearly not responsible for, but super glad this outlet exists; and Chris Messina for making Danny so angsty, adorable, and downright inspirational.

**Author's Note:**

> I just know that writing this thing was super cathartic and I'm glad I did it.


End file.
